“Everything was fine, and she had the rare, new sensation of being exactly where she wanted to be.”

“He has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him.”

“In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.”

“And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.”

“She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them: ‘We grew up together.”

“She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.''The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake.”